I was sitting in my Environmental Science class, known colloquially as BiSci 3, when Prof Uhl was asking us to think about our relations as humans to soil and to the earth. He made an incorrect association between the origins of the words “Earth”, “Human” and their etymologies.
This struck me as quite odd, the message that Uhl was going for was one of inclusivity and interconnectedness, yet his explanation of the etymology he offered was completely false. The true historical context and etymology of the terms are equally, if not more valid for the point he was making.
Uhl’s claim (viewable here along with the rest of the lecture) is that “the earth” is a distancing term to refer to the planet buy, offering the solution of “Eairth”.
“Eairth”, supposedly is a much more human term for our planet. The air in Eairth expresses the fact they we all live in the atmosphere and that it flows through all of us, with a lowercase “i” in the middle indicative of we, humans.
This claim is dubious, the word earth originates from a Proto-Germanic word meaning dirt, ground, or soil. It is not some meaningless term, and its actual origin puts it in a much closer relationship to human.
He goes on to argue that our connection to soil is intimate, that the Latin word for soil “humus” comes from the word “human”.
The Latin humus and humanus (from which we get out modern human) were completely separate terms in Latin, one was not based at all off the other. It is true that they are related terms however. The two words, along with other Latin terms such as homo (e.g. Homo Sapiens), come from an extinct, 6000-year-old language called Proto-Indo-European or P.I.E.
The P.I.E. word *dʰéǵʰōm meant earth, soil, and is where the Latin homo, humanus, and humus all have their origins.
*dʰéǵʰōm was taken directly into Latin as the word humus, referring strictly to dirt and soil. Humanus and homo actually entered from another P.I.E. word *ǵʰm̥mṓ. This word is an alteration of *dʰéǵʰōm and was used to refer to us, it’s literal meaning is near earthling or being of the earth. Earth here referring to the ground, dirt, etc.
This association of mankind as a “being of earth” is widespread, even the biblical story of the origins of man have life being breathed into a pile of dust. It is no coincidence that he is named Adam, from the Hebrew adamah, meaning ground.
The actual historical connotations and ideas around humans already place us as one with and a part of the earth. Their etymologies are closely related, both originating from the idea that they are intimately part of dirt, of earth. I believe Prof Uhl was trying to get us as humans to realize how related and interconnected we all are to the planet and the ground we walk on. He may just not have been aware of how far back and how deep of a tradition this idea really was.